“Barry’s out of recovery and into a private room. They say he’s ‘resting comfortably,’ whatever that means.”
“I guess it means just that.” He hooked his thumbs into his pants pockets. “I guess you’ll be going over there after your webcast?”
“They’re not permitting visitors.”
“Then he’s still on the critical list?”
“I don’t know,” said Helen, suddenly unaccountably irritated. “I don’t know anything. Nobody tells me anything. I’d call the Coxes, but I’m sure Mrs. Cox would be the one to answer, and I bet she’d hang up on me.”
“Don’t blame her too much,” Collie said. “She wasn’t all there last night. Women get like that when something happens to a kid. My own mom’s that way.”
“Well, I was upset too,” Helen reminded him. “I’ll bet I was as upset as she was. They’re letting the family see him. I’m tempted to go down there and pass myself off as his sister.”
“No chance. Anybody who owns a TV will know who you are before you open your mouth.” He was frowning a little. “Look, Helen, there’s something I want to ask you.”
“Yes?”
“Last night on the way over to the hospital, you told me Barry was a guy who didn’t have any enemies. We ruled out a couple of other things too—robbery, dope. It kind of leaves us with nothing, doesn’t it? I mean, no reason for the shooting at all?”
“I don’t even want to think about it,” Helen said shortly.
“But you need to think about it. You know Barry better than anybody. If he was mixed up in something shady, something illegal like selling pills or—”
“He wasn’t. There’s not even a question in my mind.”
“I’m not saying it had to be that. It was just the first possibility that came into my head. Maybe it was something entirely different, but people don’t usually get shot for nothing. Oh, once in awhile a gun goes off while somebody’s cleaning it or a hunter fires at a deer and finds out it’s another hunter, but something like this, where a guy gets lured out of the house by a phone call—well, it’s planned. It has to have been.”
“I don’t believe that,” said Helen.
“What do you believe, then? Do you have an answer? All I’m getting at is that you’re the one who has the best chance of coming up with an answer, at least until Barry’s able to talk himself.”
“I can’t think of anything.”
“Okay, okay.” He reached out and gave her chin a tap. “Keep it up. Enjoy your coffee. I’ll see you later.”
He was off down the hall, and Helen pushed the door shut behind him. It clicked into place and she turned to walk away from it. Then, slowly, she turned back and slid the bolt.
She went back into the bedroom. The sound of the lawn mower was dimmer now; the caretaker had moved over to a lawn across the way. The sunlight had shifted slightly, and shafts of gold fell across the rumpled bed and reached over to touch the alarm clock. On the dresser Barry’s picture reigned supreme, surrounded by a jar of moisturizer, a compact of blush, a palette of eye shadow.
Helen crossed the room and opened the top drawer of the dresser. For a moment she stood there, as though afraid to reach inside. Then she did, and with an unsteady hand drew forth the magazine picture of the little boy on the bicycle.
CHAPTER 9
When school let out that afternoon Julie found Ray waiting for her. He was parked in the same spot where he used to park the year before when he was a student himself, over on the far side of the lot, away from the building.
She was not surprised to see him. Somehow she had expected to find him there. When she came through the door, she broke away from the stream of laughing, shoving students and turned automatically toward that spot. She crossed to the car and opened the door, just as she had done so many times in the year that was past, and tossed her books inside and climbed in beside them.
“It seems funny,” she said by way of greeting, “to have you driving your dad’s car.”
“He’s been pretty great about letting me use it,” Ray said. “I drive him down to the store in the morning, and Mom picks him up at night. It’s odd, too, because he was plenty burned up about my taking off like I did last fall. He couldn’t understand why I’d blow off school and go out on my own, and of course, I couldn’t do any decent job of explaining.”
“What did you do with your own car?” Julie asked him. “I never knew.”
“Barry and I hammered the dent out and took it over to Hobbs and sold it to a farmer. I took a loss, but it was worth it to be rid of it.” He started the engine. “Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.”
“Up by the picnic place?”
“No. Not there.” She answered so quickly that the three words came out as one. “How about going to Henry’s? We could get a snack.”
“You’re hungry?”
“No, but we’ve got to go someplace. That’s as good as anywhere else.”
It wasn’t, as they discovered after they got there. Henry’s Ice Cream Shop was having a special on hot fudge sundaes, two for the price of one, and the news had traveled quickly. The lot was almost completely filled. Car horns honked and tooted, and there was a huge line at the window. Some of the junior high kids were climbing in and out of car windows and sitting on the hoods and shouting back and forth, while older high school students in other cars were yelling at them to be quiet.
“The picnic place?” Ray asked again.
Julie nodded, defeated. “I guess we don’t have much choice.”
They drove in silence up the curving road, and when they passed one particular spot, Julie shut her eyes and bit down hard on her lower lip. They continued to climb until they reached the sign that said “Cibola National Forest—Silver Springs.” Then Ray turned the car down a narrow dirt road that led off to the left, away from the cleared area with the tables and benches. Branches brushed against both sides of the car, and a squirrel ran across the road in front of them as they came to the stream and pulled to a stop near the bank.
It was a few moments before either of them spoke.
Finally Ray said, “It’s still the same.”
Julie nodded. The thin, silver cord of water wound its way down from the rocks above them and disappeared below in a clump of evergreens. A scattering of nameless yellow flowers poked their heads from the fresh, spring earth, and beyond the trees the sky arched in a high, rich curve of blue.
“There was a sliver of moon caught in the branches of that pine tree,” Ray said. “Remember?”
“I don’t want to remember. Not anything about that night.”
“Julie, you have to.” He reached over to cover her hand with his. “We’ve got to remember—to think—to decide together what to do.”
“Why?” Julie asked. “It’s been over for almost a year now.”
“No, it hasn’t. Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t just shove something like this under a rug and pretend it never has been. Especially now, after what’s happened to Barry.”
Julie drew her hand out from under his and folded it with her other hand in her lap. “What happened to Barry doesn’t have anything to do with the other. He was shot during a student demonstration.”
“No, he wasn’t. There wasn’t any shooting during the demonstration last night.”
“Mom thinks—” she began.
“Face it, Julie, that demonstration was peaceful. A bunch of kids carrying signs, that’s all it was. They sat in the road awhile, and the people who came to watch the fireworks had a hard time getting their cars out. There wasn’t any violence. Nobody even fired off a cherry bomb.”
“Let’s drop it, shall we? I really don’t feel like rehashing things.”
“Julie, stop it!” Ray said sternly. “We’ve got to talk!”
“Oh, all right.” She turned her face to his, and the pain in her eyes was so deep that he was momentarily sorry that
he had forced the issue. “All right,” she continued, “if you insist on talking about that night, then, yes, there was a moon in that pine tree. Yes, it was a beautiful picnic. Yes, we killed a little boy. Is there anything more?”
“There’s Barry.”
Julie sat quiet a moment, digesting the statement. Then she said slowly, “You think Barry was shot deliberately by somebody who knew what happened?”
“By the same person who wrote you that note and sent me the clipping.”
“What clipping?” Julie asked. “I didn’t know anything about a clipping.”
“I got it Saturday. It came in the mail, just the way that note did to you. It was addressed in the same block printing.”
Ray reached in his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He opened it and took out the folded newspaper column and handed it to Julie.
She took one glance and handed it back to him. “I don’t have to read it, Ray. I remember it. I can quote it word for word.”
“And what about Helen? Has she received anything in the mail?”
“Not in the mail,” Julie said in a small voice. “There was something though. I talked to her Sunday. She thought Barry might have done it, that he was playing a trick on her.”
“What was it?”
“A magazine picture,” Julie said. “It was taped to her door. It happened on Saturday. According to Helen, she was sitting out by the pool and this new guy who has the apartment two doors down from her came out and pulled up a chair beside her. They sat and talked for awhile, and then Helen got worried that she might be getting sunburned and went inside. When she got up to her apartment she found that somebody had taped a picture of a boy on a bicycle to her door. She said she thought maybe Barry had dropped over—he had said he’d be seeing her during the weekend—and had seen her there with another guy and thought he’d teach her a lesson.”
“That doesn’t sound like Barry,” Ray commented. “He plays around enough himself so he wouldn’t have any right to get jealous over Helen.”
“But Helen doesn’t know that. She doesn’t go out with other people. Besides, not having the right to be jealous doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t get that way.” Julie paused. “I’ll admit it does sound pretty unlikely, but that’s what Helen thought. She told me that if Barry didn’t call her by noon on Monday she was going to phone him and have it out.”
“Do you suppose that was what drew him out onto the athletic field?” Ray asked thoughtfully. “A phone call from Helen?”
“It could have been. The morning paper said he received a call from somebody right before he left the fraternity house.”
“And then he was shot….”
“You don’t think it was Helen!” Julie regarded him with horror. “That’s ridiculous! Helen worships the very ground Barry walks on.”
“Of course I don’t think Helen shot him,” Ray said. “She wouldn’t pick up a gun, much less pull a trigger, and she’s crazy about Barry. I’m just thinking out loud, trying to look at it from all sides.”
“If it wasn’t Helen’s phone call,” Julie said, “somebody else must have known about it. Like you said, Barry isn’t exactly the most faithful boyfriend a girl ever had. Who knows what might have been going on in other situations? There could have been girls he was seeing from the University who had jealous boyfriends—we can’t know. And then there’s the possibility of it being a totally unconnected accident, just some freak on a bad trip out walking around with a gun and not even knowing or caring who might get hurt. You read about things like that happening.”
“It’s possible,” Ray admitted. “But it would be a strange coincidence after the things the three of us have received. Barry was the one who was driving that night.”
“And he’s the only one who didn’t receive any memento of the accident. At least, as far as we know, he didn’t.”
“He received a bullet,” Ray said.
The words hung there between them, stark in the soft spring sunshine.
Julie shuddered. “All right,” she said quietly, “since you insist on saying it, let’s suppose for a moment that the person who shot Barry is the same person who has been sending us the notes and pictures and clippings. It’s the person who knows—or thinks he knows—about the accident. Then why has he waited so long? And why would he do something like this when all he has to do, all he ever had to do right from the beginning, was report us to the police?”
“The part about waiting I can’t answer.” Ray shook his head. “About the other, well, he’d have to hate us. Hate us so much that he wants to kill us himself rather than let the authorities punish us in some other way.”
“Who could hate like that?” Julie asked shakily.
“Whoever was closest to the kid, I guess.”
“His parents?”
“That figures. I know how my folks would feel, or your mom. But then again we’ve got the question of the waiting. If the parents had been able to find out somehow—and I still can’t see how they could have—why would they have waited almost a year to do something about it?”
“And how would they have known about Helen’s phone call? If it was Helen’s phone call. We don’t even know that for sure.”
“That’s the one thing we can find out without any trouble,” Ray said. “All we have to do is ask her. And as soon as they start allowing Barry to have visitors, we can find out a whole lot more. He might even have seen the person who shot him.”
“At night? On a dark field?”
“The person saw him, didn’t he? There must have been enough light to make it possible to aim a gun.”
“Helen’s still at the studio,” Julie said, glancing at her watch. “She usually gets home around five. Let’s go over there then and see what she has to tell us.”
“That’s fine with me,” Ray said. “We can kill half an hour here until it’s time for her to be home. Let’s get out and walk along the bank like we used to. I’ve thought about this place so often during the past year. That sounds crazy, I guess. I mean, there I was with all that California sunshine and saltwater and white beaches, and I’d keep remembering what it was like here with the pine smell and the stream and-and…my own girl with me.”
He had pushed it too far, and he knew it. He could see Julie stiffen.
“No,” she said. “Look, give me that clipping.”
“The thing about the accident?” He had put it back in his wallet. Now he got it out again, slowly, letting the wallet hang open an extra minute so that Julie could see her own picture smiling out at them. It was a year-old picture. She was wearing jeans and a tank top. Her hair hung loose and bouncy, and her eyes were crinkled up with laughter.
Now, as he handed her the clipping, Ray realized with a start how much her eyes had changed since that picture was taken. There was no hint of laughter in them now. They were eyes that had not laughed in a long time.
Julie took the article, careful not to brush Ray’s hand with hers, and smoothed it flat.
“…son of Michael and Mary Gregg,” she read aloud, “of 1278 Morningside Road Northeast. That’s near here, Ray. It’s one of those little roads just south of the spot where we had the accident.”
“I guess it is if the boy was riding home from a friend’s house.”
“Ray.” She drew a long breath. “I want to go there.”
“Where?”
“To his house.”
“Are you crazy?” Ray asked incredulously. “What would you want to do a sick thing like that for?”
“It’s no sicker than it was to come up here. You’re the one who keeps saying that we’ve got to face it and relive it and figure out what it is that’s happening. If we’re going to do that, I think we ought to see his house and talk with his parents.”
“Talk with his parents!” Ray was sure he was not hearing her correctly. “You mean we should just go up and ring the doorbell and say, ‘We’re two of the people who were in the car that ran down your son and we want to interview y
ou and see how you feel about it?’ You’re out of your mind!”
“You know I don’t mean that,” Julie said sharply. “And I’m not out of my mind at all. We’ve agreed that the people who have the most right to hate us are the boy’s mother and father. How are we ever going to find out about them if we don’t see them?”
“You said ‘talk with them.’ ”
“Yes, talk, but not about this. I thought—oh, Ray, couldn’t we go up to the door and introduce ourselves and say we were having car trouble? We could tell them our cells died, and ask to use the phone. If they aren’t the ones, they would never know the difference. They’d just think we were a couple of teenagers who had been up here parking and couldn’t get down again.”
“And if they are the ones who are after us?”
“We’d know it,” Julie said. “At least, I’m sure I would. When they saw us, when they heard our names, it would show on their faces. The shock of seeing us appear like that on their doorstep—”
“Could send them straight for their gun.” Ray completed the sentence for her. “If they are the people who shot Barry, don’t you imagine they’d like to add two more to the list?”
“In their own front yard?” Julie shook her head. “Be reasonable. It’s broad daylight, and there are sure to be neighbors. It’s different from the situation with Barry. Besides, I just can’t believe someone’s out to kill us all. I still think it’s a drug freak, and that poor Barry happened into the wrong place at the wrong time, just like, well, like little Daniel Gregg did.”
“I don’t like it,” Ray said. “Like I said, it’s sick. I sure don’t want to see them.”
“But I do.” Julie’s voice was low and firm. It was the same voice that had stated so flatly a year ago, “It’s over, Ray. Whatever it was that we had, it’s over. I’m breaking free of you, of the others, of everything that will ever remind me of that awful night.” She had meant that, and she meant this now.
“I want to see them,” Julie said determinedly. “If we’re facing this, then let’s really face it. Let’s know. I’m going to the house, and if you want to take me there, fine. If you don’t, I’ll take Mom’s car and drive up there myself.”